1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing a vehicle-mounted camera housing of a vehicle-mounted apparatus attached to various car models, a vehicle-mounted camera housing, and a vehicle-mounted camera.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there has been used a vehicle-mounted camera that applies image processing to an image picked up by a camera attached to a vehicle to extract information regarding a traffic lane on a road surface, a preceding vehicle, an oncoming vehicle, a person, or a road sign from the image. The vehicle-mounted camera is used with a vehicle-mounted system that supports safe traveling of the vehicle and a monitoring system that monitors intrusion of suspicious persons.
In recent years, a variety of sensors such as a rain sensor, an illuminance sensor, a millimeter wave or laser radar sensor have been mounted on vehicles. Therefore, an attachment space for the vehicle-mounted camera is required to be reduced. Further, the vehicle-mounted camera needs to be prevented from hindering driving of a driver, for example, blocking the visual field of the driver or giving an oppressive feeling to the driver. To lighten such feeling, the vehicle-mounted camera is attached to the upper area of a windshield of the vehicle with an inclined posture along the sloping surface of the windshield.
When the vehicle-mounted camera is attached to the vehicle, angle adjustment (optical axis adjustment) needs to be performed (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-89745). Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-89745 discloses an optical axis adjustment system including a driving device to adjust the posture of a vehicle-mounted camera through operation from the outside and a retaining device to retain the driving device in a predetermined position.
However, in the invention disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-89745, since the optical axis adjustment system includes an angle adjustment mechanism such as the driving device and the retaining device, the number of components increases and the structure of the optical axis adjustment system is complicated. Further, in the invention disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-89745, labor to adjust the angle adjustment mechanism (angle adjustment labor) is necessary. As a result, the invention disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-89745 causes an increase in the cost of the vehicle-mounted camera.